Apple today seeded the third beta of OS X 10.10.4 to developers, approximately two weeks after releasing the second OS X 10.10.4 beta and three weeks after releasing the first OS X 10.10.4 beta. OS X 10.10.4 has been in testing since mid-April, following the early April release of OS X 10.10.3, which included the new Photos for OS X app.

The beta, build 14E17e, can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store or through the Mac Developer Center. Apple is asking developers to focus on Photos, Migration, and Arabic and Hebrew languages.

OS X 10.10.3 introduced several consumer-facing changes including the new Photos for OS X app, a redesigned emoji picker, new diversified emoji, and more, but OS X 10.10.4 appears to be an under-the-hood update that brings performance enhancements and bug fixes. Thus far, OS X 10.10.4 betas have not included outward facing design changes or feature additions.

The first two updates to OS X Yosemite, OS X 10.10.1 and OS X 10.10.2, were also minor behind-the-scenes updates that improved performance through bug fixes and enhancements.

Top Rated Comments

The problem with "the wifi bug" is that I doubt it's A bug. It's likely not as simple as that.

There are likely multiple bugs. But that doesn't change the fact that they could (and damn well should ASAP) fix the bugs we KNOW ABOUT,
the most notorious of which is the discoveryd bug, the fact that there is something wrong with the protocol used by base stations to hold onto (and later update) the names of Apple devices, leading to constantly changing names (and things not working because the expected name has been changed).

There is likely a second, different, bug that's related to iOS WiFi synching. This occurs even when the target mac has NOT done the "let's change my name for random reasons" thing, and appears to be a bug on the iOS side, not the mac side.

In addition to all this, there's just basically STUPID UI stuff that they should have fixed years ago. It's nice that my phone automatically connects to, say, the MacysFreeWiFi network when I'm in a Macys. BUT the system should at least test that that WiFi network is actually freaking working (and not connect, or display a broken WiFi icon) if it can't use the WiFi to actually reach the outside world.

The big problem behind all this is Apple's utter stony silence on the issue. Do they even CARE that there is a problem? Do they have a plan for fixing it? When can we expect progress? etc
MS used to be the big bad evil, but over the past few years they've become a LOT more pleasant than Apple to deal with regarding this sort of thing --- substantially more forthcoming about issues and schedules (and, if we're being honest, substantially less likely to write/release amateur code that exhibits these sorts of low-level OS-type issues in the first place).

... The big problem behind all this is Apple's utter stony silence on the issue. Do they even CARE that there is a problem? Do they have a plan for fixing it? When can we expect progress? etc

MS used to be the big bad evil, but over the past few years they've become a LOT more pleasant than Apple to deal with regarding this sort of thing --- substantially more forthcoming about issues and schedules (and, if we're being honest, substantially less likely to write/release amateur code that exhibits these sorts of low-level OS-type issues in the first place).

Well, this is confusing. The previous article, right below this on on the page today, says that there is a new, or majorly revised music app included. Yet, this article says that there are no new consumer facing features. Since the new music app is part of the new beta, these are contradictions.

Another Nay sayer.
WIFI issues was and still is a problem.
The beta I am on (beta2) had it solved for me, so I thought, yet after 1 week the problems started again.
Strange thing is, I didn't have any WIFI problems in the pre release OS X 10.10 beta's, the the problems started and hasn't been solved since.
It IS still not fixed, and yes it's 10.10.x, not hardware.
I started using OS X from 10.0b, never had any WIFI issues, until Yosemite came along.

Are you sure it's actually a WiFi problem and not the problems that have been reported with discoveryd since the Yosemite beta? A lot of the "WiFi issues" people see are actually issues with discoveryd.

It's a bit more convoluted than this, but a large update size doesn't necessarily mean a lot has changed. Apple doesn't just send the changes ("delta updates"), when you update OS X. Instead it essentially redownloads any files that have changed and replaces the files that already exist.

The downside to this is since the update usually sends a lot more than what has changed, you have larger downloads for each update. The upside to this is it's (probably*) less prone to causing issues (e.g., if the files that were already there were altered, the update was corrupted somehow, etc.).

This isn't exactly how it works, but it's probably close enough for explanation purposes.

*I don't have much experience with how delta updates are made, so I could be completely off here.

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